"I discovered some new old (operational?) rules" Topic

I had come across Fire Brigade on Nobleknight recently and wondered what they might be like, – then just yesterday i found them on DrivethruRPG (oddly never came up in my rules searches through WGV, but they are there)

and so i got them and interestingly these claim to be "operational level" which is probably the name for the scale i like. An operational scale game, though does not necessarily mean it is an operational game

Was just thinking – have you looked at some board games for Operational level games?

For an example with Moderns could I suggest SPIs Central Front Series?
12hrs a turn, 4km hex, battalion/regiment sized units.

Probably loads of examples for WW2 but I can't think of one straight off.

Boardgamegeek.com would be a good place to look though.

Georg,

Please let us know what you think of the rules.

Jim

Picked them up (currently on sale). HOWEVER, you will not be able to copy text or print this PDF (resticted permissions)

Stands are Companies of Infantry or Platoons of vehicles

hmm, that is annoying with the restrictions because i dont own a tablet device and i really cant get interested in playing any game that requires me to be looking at a computer screen or constantly zoom in on an android phone

- i havent tried printing them, but is that really the case that one cant even do that? that seems unfairly prohibitive

as for operational board games – yes i am keen on those but really i want to know which board games could best be converted to miniatures – or is that actually a simpler process than one thinks and really any rules can be converted?
there was mention that ATS tobruk could good for this, and i wonder about Panzer Leader, and Panzer Battles from S&T and Panzer 44 from SPI
(surely it can be done if the scale is not too large, ie that the game doesnt have piles of units able to stack in a hex) – so, what boardgames offer this nice sweet spot of being operational but without each hex being too large in representative scale?
In particular what North Africa campaigns are there = would something like 'Desert Steel' work?

Currently on sale at Noble Knight:

link

I'll be blunt, I've seen several attempts- made one myself- to port rules from boardgame to miniatures. It usually ends up as an unplayable mess. Usually. But boardgames and their computerised derivatives can be great research tools and scenario providers.

Have a look at Tobruk '41 ( link ), mate. This SPI-style boardgame re-modelled for computers is well researched and includes scenarios that range from company raids at Tobruk to OP Crusader. Hex side to hex side is scaled at 1km. The game engine is a modified form of the system used in Atlantic Wall, Highway to the Reich and Wacht am Rhein, but with unit strengths given in individual warm bodies, vehicles and guns.

There's other games which may interest you in the series as well.

I think the problem is at the operational level, you're dealing with weeks of time and hundreds of kilometers. It just doesn't translate.

I want to do the Bulge. I'm just going to do a big hex board and swap out counters for 6mm miniatures….

George:

If you look at my rules list the 1st column indicates if I own a copy. Happyto answer questions about titles.

Drop me a line.

mark@scalecreep.com

I'll put in a vote for Fistful of TOWs 3.

For an example with Moderns could I suggest SPIs Central Front Series? 12hrs a turn, 4km hex, battalion/regiment sized units.

Those are good rules to convert. They are on the complex side, but are a good target for a boardgame conversion into a figure gaming format.

so, what boardgames offer this nice sweet spot of being operational but without each hex being too large in representative scale?

If converting a boardgame into a figure game format don't use hexes. In the end its not worth it, being difficult to create a playing area and detracting from the bling. You can avoid hexes with a few simple rules and it does work reasonable well.

These videos may provide some ideas of one way of doing it;
youtu.be/gjRO4zBlZtc
youtu.be/5Fwp4bPoaQM

But if you like North Africa, the SPI North Africa quad rules may be of interest to you. This is the link tot he rules.
PDF link

thanks again – perhaps i just need to disabuse myself of such silly ideas then. I dont know why but such projects jsut seem endlessly appealling to me – the same goes for La bataille dans le temps du Napoleon series

I am familiar with WDS/tiller/hps games I have most of the napoleonic titles and a few ww2 titles such as War on the Southern Front and Bulge 44. I think its the process of just trying to figure out a good conversion that attracts me more than just a pc game though.

I was looking at KISS Rommel (although as mentioned elsewhere its latest version from 2006 seems incomplete) and noticed its playing area seems to cover in some abstract way, the whole theater i think.

if the scale of the theater is larger and the time scale also increases then might that not just still work if the say the turn represents a day (for games with turns being more than a week i would probably not look at)

"Back in the day", Bruce Taylor (author of the Challenger rules) did two sets of operational level rules, one for Modern and one for WW2 called Corps Commander and Korps Commander respectively. Each stand was a company if I recall right and you kept track of individual vehicle losses, so a 10 vehicle BMP company would be represented by one model, but you would track the losses on a card, paper, etc. A very interesting system that didn't catch on with my group as they had a hard time thinking outside of the 1:1 box, but it might be what you're looking for.

Two other oprational-level WWII mini games are Megablitz and Assault Gun. Both games are similar scale where infantry stands are regiment/brigade.

I am familiar with WDS/tiller/hps games I have most of the napoleonic titles and a few ww2 titles

If you ever feel like a PBEM game, Georg, send me a PM and we'll sort it.

cool thanks for the offer Dal – when i have free time again to do so i might :) what titles do you own?

"Back in the day", Bruce Taylor (author of the Challenger rules) did two sets of operational level rules, one for Modern and one for WW2 called Corps Commander and Korps Commander respectively.

I have fond memories of those rules. Back when they came out the common scale was 1-1, basically squad scale. CC and KC got me really excited as i could now command a whole division. In reality the rules were so complex you needed to restrict yourself down to a Brigade, but they were enjoyable – once you mastered them.

WWII- Sea Lion, Tobruk '41, Salerno '43, Kiev '43, Scheldt '44, Market-Garden and Normandy.

Napoleonics- Bautzen and Waterloo.

Also SYW and Gettysburg.

hmm i will have to look at those in more detail then also

On another note and speaking of boardgame conversions and the pitfalls of it – has anyone attempted a conversion of SPI's campaign for north africa ;) ?

okay i see what you mean about no printing regarding the Fire Brigade rules – seriously that is just too irritating, looks like i won't be bothering with these

why not just let one print off the pdf they purchased? its an old set of rules – just secure it like the normal way i s wgv do it – with putting my name in the bottom corner as the owner of the purchased copy

A lot of more tactical board games drew inspiration from miniatures games. At the operational level, there's a longer tradition of using a map game for the higher level, then translating the forces to miniatures for engagements arising from that.

Frank Chadwick's Barbarossa/25 campaign for Command Decision brought the term "bath-tubbing" into parlance, and a lot that's been done both before and since is in a similar vein.

There seems to be more resistance to moving up the scale in WW2 than in other miniatures games, but I appreciate that there's probably also a more basic conflict with the reasons why people choose to use miniatures in the first place.

Truly operational miniatures games seem therefore rather a recent field of significant exploration, still unusual and at an early stage of development.

@GeorgeBuchner: I think the CfNA conversion really needed is to computer-assisted form! As matters stand, it's a potentially interesting historical study, but as a game the book-keeping ends up being for most people more work than fun, so the rarity of games started is surpassed by the rarity of games completed.

The zooming-in technique can be as indefinitely ‘fractal' as resources permit. If a sufficiently important (or interesting) action is nonetheless so small that it calls for going down to a 1:1 ratio, we are in principle free to set that up with appropriate models and rules.

Limited table space being the first consideration, it may be advisable to arrange a way to complete one such segment, note the time to update the larger situation with the results, and clear that side-table to set up another such slice that's in the modeled time happening in parallel.

Truly operational miniatures games seem therefore rather a recent field of significant exploration, still unusual and at an early stage of development.

For WW2 you are probably correct, although even back in 2002 you had Megablitz and a host of other similar scale rules. There was an attempt even earlier with Corps Commander in 1986, but its complexity was so high it was hard to command more than a regiment per side. In the world of Napoloenics Snappy Nappy was around in 1994 and Volley & Bayonet in 2008. But Napoleon's Battles in 1989, was the oldest, which allowed you to field a force of 25,000 men per side, which allows you to refight a number of historical battles. Ancients was the exception, if you ignore SPI's PRESTAGES, which was a board-game, you need to wait until 1992 to field an army of 20,000 men per side, just. Lost Battles in 2003 allowed you to refight any ancient battle, but it was a hybrid figure/board game.